"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!

Could also be something like historical events being messed up and the Doctor having to make sure things go as they're meant to, a la Back To The Future 2. At my most generous, maybe the aim is to make more historical/educational type shows and do stuff like teach kids about the civil rights movement

This could get offensive real fast if it falls into a "Doctor inspired Rosa" / white savior trope, or if aliens / monsters were somehow involved.

I'm not going to assume that's where this will go. They did the Christmas Truce well by using it as a backdrop and not having aliens/the Doctor be involved. That had the same potential to be fundamentally hosed up, if not the same potential to offend.

It's easy to see a ton of ways this could be really hosed up and bad, but I don't think it's worth getting preemptively upset. Context matters a whole lot here and we don't have that.

I mean, I'm totally prepared to call it garbage after it proves to be garbage, but I'm holding of judgement for now. I will say I admire the show for trying to tackle racism head on, even if I don't quite have total faith it'll be tackled well, and I recognize it could quite possibly be incredibly counterproductive and bad.

Reserving judgement until more info is available, but as of right now it's starting to look like my "gave up on the show under Moffat" streak stands a good chance of remaining unbroken. Mainly because I do not trust that a sensitive and nuanced portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement is going to come from the same man who wrote "Cyberwoman".

Hey, Karn, what do you say to console someone who just got Thought Erased? You give up? "Need a hand?"

It turns out all the bad racist people were Zygons all along, and the solution the whole time was just to hate those dirty, interfering, refugee Zygons, who were the real racists.

I'm not sure Doctor Who in general is the show to tackle the Civil Rights Movement in America in any kind of direct way. I'll wait until we know more, but, yeah... this doesn't look good. Even if it's just scene-setting, like... to what end?

im stupider then dog shit, i dont give a shit, and i dont give a fuck, and i will never shut the fuck up, and i'll always Respect my enemys.
- ernest hemingway

This is kind of hilarious because zygons on the set is absolutely the most perfect leak to make this sound worse than it already did. The leak to kill hype and lower expectations, the leak no one wanted.

It turns out all the bad racist people were Zygons all along, and the solution the whole time was just to hate those dirty, interfering, refugee Zygons, who were the real racists.

I'm not sure Doctor Who in general is the show to tackle the Civil Rights Movement in America in any kind of direct way. I'll wait until we know more, but, yeah... this doesn't look good. Even if it's just scene-setting, like... to what end?

Maybe uhhhh the Zygons disguise themselves as white people and actually just allow Parks to sit quietly in her seat? And without this incident the history of the Civil Rights movement is altered to the Zygons' ends?

Even that would undermine how an incident like this was eventually going to happen and also puts Doctor Who in the really lovely position of having to "fix" the timeline by reverting to the horrible reality that a woman was harassed and then arrested and embarrassed for the color of her skin.

There's basically no way they can handle this well, they should not even attempt to touch this.

The best way I think this could be done is to just use the setting as a backdrop for an unrelated story. Allows the Doctor to comment about it and maybe ties into the themes, but without tying directly into the events, which would be tasteless and irresponsible.

Rosa Parks was an empowered young activist who specifically sought to fight Jim Crow laws, and the worst thing this story could do is perpetuate the idea that she was a tired, apolitical old lady.

I mean sure, but that's also a bit of a stretch isn't it? At the time of the bus protest she was in her forties and she didn't board the bus looking to challenge Jim Crow. She wasn't apolitical, but she also wasn't John Lewis looking to cause "Good Trouble". Heck, I didn't even realize (or forgot) that she originally sat in the "colored" section of the bus, and was only asked to move because the white-only section filled up. She was a politically active middle-aged woman going home from work who hit her "gently caress this" point in the face of Jim Crow.

All that aside, I think filming an episode about the US Civil Rights movement in South Africa is wild

Thing is, Chibnall could have easily done a DW episode or two about racism and the struggle for equal rights and civil rights, all without potentially trivializing actual historical figures and events or alienating viewers who take offense as to how these actual people were depicted. Just follow the grand SF tradition of "make an analogue for real-world Earth thing by setting it on a different planet with different species". Hell, DW's done it more times than most of us have had hot dinners, combined.

I mean sure, but that's also a bit of a stretch isn't it? At the time of the bus protest she was in her forties and she didn't board the bus looking to challenge Jim Crow. She wasn't apolitical, but she also wasn't John Lewis looking to cause "Good Trouble". Heck, I didn't even realize (or forgot) that she originally sat in the "colored" section of the bus, and was only asked to move because the white-only section filled up. She was a politically active middle-aged woman going home from work who hit her "gently caress this" point in the face of Jim Crow.

All that aside, I think filming an episode about the US Civil Rights movement in South Africa is wild

Not to do a too deep dive into this but they had a few cases of this and Rosa Parks presented as someone white america would sympathize with/find no personal fault with.

Also, as an American it's going to be uh...interesting to see a British take on the civil rights movement. Moffat gave Nixon a much more kindlier treatment that he deserved.

Hey, Karn, what do you say to console someone who just got Thought Erased? You give up? "Need a hand?"

Weird how we have to condemn the Hartnell era of Doctor Who by turning the First Doctor into a cartoon racist, but Nixon and Churchill are depicted as lovable scamps who had to be hardass decision makers.

Weird how we have to condemn the Hartnell era of Doctor Who by turning the First Doctor into a cartoon racist, but Nixon and Churchill are depicted as lovable scamps who had to be hardass decision makers.

This is because it was Moffats parting shot at those who call him sexist. He wanted to let you know that despite his faults it could be much worse... by inventing faults that weren't present in a 60 year old version of the show.

It's actually immensely disrespectful to the production crew of the time (which remains the most diverse one that Doctor Who has ever had) for a white rich man to protray their character as a racist and sexist dinosaur for his own gratification.

Hey, Karn, what do you say to console someone who just got Thought Erased? You give up? "Need a hand?"

I think it was meant to be in defense of casting Jodie Whittaker rather than a defense of his own writing, to be honest, but it was still cowardly to not only compare the current state of the show to 50 years ago, but to an invented version of 50 years ago that needlessly turns up the sexism to 11.

Coincidentally, that's what a Civil Rights era episode is in danger of doing.